Guidepost Montessori at Round Rock

Our son is one year and in one of the Nido classrooms and we&#39;ve had a great experience with Guidepost so far. I appreciate how attentive they are to COVID protocols, as COVID exposure was our biggest hesitancy to putting our child in a classroom setting. We&#39;ve only been with the school for a month now, but so far it&#39;s been great. I really love the administrators, Shavonda and Tiffany, who&#39;s jobs and day to day work I have a lot of compassion for. Being responsible for the safety of a massive group of kids (and their parents) during COVID times just sounds so rough. I think they&#39;re doing a great job and I do my best to show them my appreciation regularly. I do wish I could watch my child interact in his classroom more, but I also fully support the schools COVID protocol of not allowing parents inside the building. I know it&#39;s for everyone&#39;s safety. I just feel sad that I don&#39;t get to watch my child have these experiences for his first time. To those considering a daycare for their little one, I love Montessori, and I love the team here, and I think you&#39;ll find your child in loving and attentive hands.

Guidepost Montessori took over the previous school in this building. My son had been at the previous school since he was 10 months old and then it shut down 5 months before he was 3. We loved his previous school so much we still drove him there even though we had moved out to Round Rock. We came to the tough decision of having to decided to enroll him at Guidepost once they had bought out the previous school or to move him closer to home. Even though the zoom meetings went horribly and they tried to preach to us the wonders that Montessori offers instead of addressing our main concerns about staffing and covid procedures, we chose to enroll him with Guidepost since the school was familiar and some of his favorite teachers had chosen to stay with Guidepost. We were lucky and got his favorite teacher, but then she was quickly moved to a different age group and we were never even told he had a different teacher. A lack of communication is a huge complaint amongst parents here. I had to send emails asking where his teacher went. His next lead teacher was hard to get a read on. She seemed to lack a bit of warmth, but we figured it was just hard to bond with her since we were just dropping him off at the door. He seemed to like her and we never had concerns over his safety or anything like that. Then we had a teacher conference and we started to doubt we had made a good decision in choosing Guidepost. She talked at us and not with us the entire time. She said things like &#34;He doesn&#39;t like working on his letters so we aren&#39;t doing them right now.&#34;  Seems like a pretty important thing to not do just because he shows more interest in the blocks. Though we were not thrilled, he still seemed happy and loved his friends there, and they have a fantastic menu. Chef Russ is a rock star. He is everything warm and caring that we wanted in a child care facility. Unfortunately, the issues with his teacher, though she has since left the school, seem to be on every level of the school. Still to this point I am not sure who the leaders are in the school. There is a lady that sits in an office and never once greeted me or my son. My son came home in different clothes sometimes up to twice a week, and I can count on one hand how many times I received any kind of note on why he was in new clothes over the 10+ months he was there. Rarely did we receive a full day of updates (basics like nap length, what he ate, etc) I was continually left out of important emails and had to ask other parents what was going on. To my knowledge there are just a couple of remaining staff from his previous school, and many of the kids from the previous school have also left. There seems to be a high turnover amongst the staff. With my job shifting closer to home we made the decision to move him closer. An important thing to note is they will not prorate your tuition when you leave. I gave our notice he would be leaving on the 15th and I sent it days before their required 30 day notice. Knowing I would have to pay a full month of tuition for 9 days plus tuition at his new school. Then the day before tuition is pulled from my account I get a notice that we were getting the tuition rate increase. So, 9 days left and they increased our tuition. When I sent an email about this I was told in person they would comp the tuition for his last 9 days. I thought this was very generous when I was really just looking for the extra tuition to not be charged to us. Then when my account did get charged I was told it was my fault because I still had it set to autopay and that if I did not turn off autopay they would keep charging me even though he would not be at the school. So, I turned off autopay and was told a refund would be in my account in 3-5 business days. I gave it a few extra days, and when I inquired about it someone from higher up emailed me and told me since he did attend half the month they were going to charge me the full amount and no acceptations could be made. (and at this point they had also shut down from a covid outbreak so, we ended up paying an increased rate for a total of 6.5 days). This just drove home the feeling we had had that this company seems to care more about the money than the kids. We have watched the changes occur at the school over the last 10 months and they have all seemed to benefit the staff over the children. They painted the entire school white, removing color from the halls. They took the space that used to be for extra activities like yoga and extended learning and turned it into a teachers lounge. They removed the rock wall from the &#34;gym&#34; and before we left we heard they were also removing the sand boxes. I am glad he is somewhere now where every staff member seems warm, already knows his name, uses every inch of the school to aid their learning, and sends photos, videos, and full updates daily.

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